It's Spring!

Coming up the street today, I could see that our front yard was ablaze with color from the crocus (croci?)! Warren tries to plant more each year and has since we moved in. Unfortunately a skunk ate most of last year's crop, but I am sure he will be at it again late summer. As the temps are supposed to be in the 80's this weekend, I know these will all be gone by Monday but they are at their peak of color today.

These are amongst my favorites as I love purple and orange together. Has to be a quilt in there somewhere.


And finally the beginnings of the Great Blue Heron!! Usually I piece the background first but decided to go for the bird first this time. Because the background looks kind of plain in the original photo, I have decided to do some piecing in those areas to make that negative space a little more interesting. I am calling this one something like "From a Fish's Perspective" as I am kind of looking up at him and there is some foreshortening of the neck because of this. He was sitting on a post in the original photo but will be in the water in the quilt -- ah, artistic license! I am using a lot of blues in this even though they read as grey or black as he is called the Great Blue Heron (even though he looks grey to me...).

Now I have to put this aside for a couple of days as I have homework to do for the weekend and I have cheated for half the assignment already. We were supposed to construct a series of blocks using exercises from a design book. I chose to use EQ6 and design them there instead of in cloth. (The good part of this was that I learned several new things I could do in Electric Quilt which is always a plus!) The second part of the exercises is to use specific paintings and create value studies from them. I will actually do that one in cloth (although fused instead of my usual piecing). So will have to hop to it!